Key reasons for outsourcing IT to Bulgaria

The fast pace of technology developments combined with the current challenging global circumstances lead to a complete change in the way businesses operate. In line with that, it is worth exploring a partnership with a technology provider who can get you quickly up to speed while taking into consideration your goals. One of the things to consider before selecting a partner is the destination to which you want to outsource your IT services. In this blog post, we will look at the factors that define the best sourcing location, and why it is worth outsourcing IT to Bulgaria. The country’s skilled IT experts and engineering professionals, cultural proximity to Western Europe and fluency in multiple languages guarantee that you can focus on your innovation projects without exhausting your whole budget. There are even more benefits that can assure one excellent outsourcing partnership. Just keep on reading.

Why IT outsourcing is for you?

According to research by BusinessWire for the state of the global IT Outsourcing industry (2020-2027), its value is expected to reach the amount of $410 billion by 2027. The world pandemic proved not only that the sector is quite resilient to changing circumstances of a global scale, but also that it is quick to adapt to business needs for mass digitalization and modernization of processes and frameworks. It is not difficult to identify all of the benefits of outsourcing your software development or other services. The right sourcing partner can support your business in becoming more flexible to scale solutions as needed. In addition, outsourcing helps you reduce recruitment time by tapping into an international talent pool of highly skilled and experienced software developers. Lastly, it can help you reduce costs by finding a location with a lower cost of talent or provided government help.

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Challenges addressed by IT outsourcing 

A key factor for every business is the technical implementation of ideas, affecting growth opportunities. If done with the right partner, IT outsourcing can help address these and benefit your company in many ways. Let’s dig into some of the biggest challenges it can solve for you:

IT strategy

To succeed in the competitive business world, you need to have a comprehensive plan that keeps a view of resources, the extent of growth potential, and other industry factors. Often underestimated, an IT strategy that’s aligned with the business goals can ensure efficiency from the start and result in a significantly higher return on investment.

Regardless of having an in-house IT team or not, taking advantage of external’ expertise to undertake the process will benefit you in many ways. It will help you ensure objectivity and flexibility inestimating and allocating IT budget, address challenges in infrastructure and applications development and most importantly, achieve innovation for a competitive edge.

Software development processes

Unclear processes and roles across business units and lack of methodical approach to software development can have a fatal impact on your project. A multiskilled team made up of self-starters – that’s what every business is looking for.

This means optimization of the software development efforts and increase in the efficiency of your entire team. In most cases, our clients often rely on our know-how when it comes to software development methodologies, whether it’s Scrum, Kanban or some other principle. We also help them get on board with best practices like daily meetings, retrospectives, sprints or iterations, or management tools to make work traceable at all times.

On-boarding

One of the key benefits of IT outsourcing is the speed with which talent can be brought into the company and start contributing to the project. Yet, keeping the focus on that speed, it’s easy to overlook the on-boarding process, especially when it comes to onboarding an external team. However, when your project success depends on that extra talent, it’s important that they are well-versed in your vision, understand your objectives or the underlying principle of the project. In fact, onboarding is the time to lay strong foundations, so you can get the most out of the partnership. Adding social elements that focus on blending your partner team with your one, rather than focusing solely on development will ensure success in the long run. You can facilitate on-boarding by bringing the team to work together at the same place for the project kick-start or during an important phase. For example, we make sure to spend enough time with the client team, regardless of the location, to achieve the alignment needed from the very start.

Cost management

Predicting and controlling project costs can help you save yourself a lot of headaches. For example, bringing in experienced software architects to work closely with you as the founder or your head of operations will ensure optimal understanding of your requirements. Thus, you’ll be provided with a more precise estimate, including project costs and potential operational risks. At the same time, as your performance requirements grow, you still need to be thoughtful about repetitive and upcoming expenses and optimize your budget accordingly. Whether it’s minimalizing costs for cloud services or any integrated subscription-based software, looking at the bigger picture and making informed decisions is key. Having an IT partner on your side can safeguard you from wasted budget and will help you make the most of your investment.

Product sustainability

When it comes to the long-term development of your company, sustainability is the name of the game. Bringing in external expertise will give you that outside perspective and will help you find the balance between speed and quality. For example, a recent startup we’ve worked with had an amazing product idea that required the implementation of a feature-rich mobile app. As they wanted to release with lightning speed, we helped them separate the must-haves from the nice-to-have features to build a fully functional app that does not compromise on quality. They were then able to easily scale the development and add more to it, while their user base was steadily growing. Isn’t that what technology partners are there for?

Talent scalability

For a founder, the journey to scale can be one of the most uncomfortable times as the process of attracting new best-in-class talent at scale is hard, and retaining that talent is even harder. However, it’s not always about growth, there might be a moment when you need to slow down the development pace and scale the team down for a certain period. Building a strong relationship with your IT outsourcing partner sooner rather than later will open you a door to expert talent but will also allow you to be flexible.

How to choose the best IT outsourcing destination for you?

When deciding to outsource, you first need to look at the macro factors such as political and economic conditions and their influence over certain regions offering outsourcing services. Where should you start? Here are several pointers that can help you out:

• Get to know the outsourcing growth areas, a.k.a regions in which it is invested heavily in the development of skilled professionals. Such is Europe, identified with good rates and qualified developers;
• Confirm that the region is internationally recognizable for the quality of delivered software solutions for the outsourcing models of interest to you. In case you are looking to outsource ITO and SaaS services, both America and EMEA are desirable options. If it is IaaS you want and it involves cloud services such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure, then you can consider EMEA or Asia-Pacific;
• Identify the country’s tech proficiency rank – that helps you decide how good your partners are in custom development with particular technology frameworks. You can use as a reference for your research Coursera’s Global Skills Index which ranks the total skills in the most prominent technologies for the last 12 months.
• Check the ranked development partners by country and by location – Clutch, Toptal, and Aciety can be your tech fellows here.

Need more reasons to select a sourcing country? Below, we share with you the “why” factors for outsourcing your IT services to Bulgaria.

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Why outsourcing IT to Bulgaria is worth your time and dime?

Outsourcing software development to Eastern Europe is a decision preferred by the majority of leading businesses around the world. According to research from Clutch, there are over 2500 IT outsourcing companies in Eastern Europe. Data from DesignRush shows that the educated and trained tech talent pool each year exceeds 1M. It does not come as a surprise then that big tech giants such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, and IBM have decided to open branches in the region.

Several leading international rankings point that Bulgaria’s IT Outsourcing market is proliferating. According to AT Kearney’s 2021 Global Services Location Index (GSLI) Bulgaria is in the top 25, based on factors such as financial attractiveness, people skills, and availability, as well as business environment and digital resonance. Bulgaria may be way smaller than its Asian counterparts or any of the surrounding outsourcing locations, but it challenges their scale with skills. It has traditions in Computer Science with the first International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) being held in the country back in 1989. Furthermore, it tops the rankings in International Olympiads in Mathematics (IOM), IOI, and others, way ahead of more developed countries such as UK and Germany for example.

According to AIBEST’s annual Report for 2022, by 2025 sourcing companies are expected to have an aggregate turnover corresponding to 9% of Bulgaria's national GDP. Also, the aggregated operating revenue of the sourcing companies in Bulgaria is projected to exceed EUR 8.9 bln by 2025. The industry’s operating value also continues to grow exponentially as a consequence of accelerating transition towards more complicated solutions, “knowledge-intense and value-added activities”. As an example, the new EuroHPC supercomputer was assembled and launched at Bulgaria’s Sofia Tech Park in the last months. It will increase considerably the computing power in Bulgaria and Europe. It is expected to be the most powerful in Eastern Europe and to support researchers, industry, and public users in the development of optimized solutions to complex issues from the health, energy, agriculture, material design, and other sectors.

Bulgaria has become one of the top software development outsourcing services destinations in Europe. This is majorly due to its skilled professionals that continue to deliver quality innovative solutions and to exceed business expectations as indicated in many rankings.

The quality of the Bulgarian tech talent

Not by accident, Bulgaria is named the “European Silicon Valley”. More than 5,000 students major and graduate with a degree in ICT in over 38 academic institutions across Bulgaria. National data shows that during the last five years, more than 10,800 Bulgarian students graduated in computer science, software development, mathematics, and statistics. Specially developed academies such as Telerik and SoftUni support the fast-tracked but quality education of future developers in full-stack, back-end, front-end, and quality testing tracks. Furthermore, in 2019 AIBEST worked in collaboration with Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” to launch a master’s program in sourcing. It is an effort to meet the business needs of the outsourcing industry in Bulgaria.

Nowadays, apart from learning to speak a second and third language, many young people in high school gain proficiency in several programming languages and frameworks. According to national statistics, 220 high schools offer Information and communications technology curricula combined with high-quality English language courses. There are whole high schools dedicated to ICT education. They, together with the technical academies work in close collaboration with different foreign and Bulgarian IT services companies to provide quality internships or first workplaces for graduates. All these parameters indicate that Bulgaria can deliver on its promise for an agile, highly-skilled, and qualified IT workforce.

Imagine having them as an extension or a part of your team. What do you think? Here is what our clients say on the matter:

We have developed a very professional working relationship with Accedia over the years and they continue to offer technical consultancy and apply best practices across both our development and operational environments. Their dedicated support and engineering skills have led to improved performance and scalability to serve our expanding user base.

Brad Eliot, Group CIO, MultiChoice Group Africa’s leading video entertainment company

Other factors that help it get to the top of the list involve both macroeconomic and industry-specific characteristics, such as:

Location

The country’s strategic position has been an advantage since the past. Being located close to Central and Western Europe, as well as the quickly evolving Middle East, makes it a strategic choice for foreign investors planning to outsource their software development. Its location also assures minimal differences in cultural views and work ethics. Being a 2-hour flight away from anywhere within Europe is certainly helpful, but benefits in fact spread globally - outsourcing IT to Bulgarian companies have proven success rate in delivering quality services to US organizations, making the country a top choice for lots of them.

Economic forecast for outsourcing IT to Bulgaria whitepaper

Bulgarian IT infrastructure

According to the Netindex Internet coverage and speed index, Bulgaria is in 11^th place in the world for mobile speed. Since 2010, the country has started to heavily invest in IT and tech hubs in strategic locations around the country. Such is the Sofia Tech Park, funded in full by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Economic. Existing since 2016, it is one of the most modern in the country and is usually the location for significant science and tech fairs and events. Apart from that, the major investments of tech giants such as IBM and Microsoft are drawing prominent tech speakers to IT and technology events.

Lower cost of doing business

The Bulgarian Lev, the country’s national currency, is pegged to the EURO which makes it a reliable destination for outsourcing. This factor is also applicable for US companies, as the rates of doing business in America still stay much higher than those across the EU and Asia. According to Indeed, the average base salary in the US for 2020 was $127K. At the same time, Payscale indicates that the average salary for a software developer in Bulgaria ranges from $25K (junior developers) to $75K (senior developers) per year.

Low turnover rate

Bulgarian development companies are popular with their perseverance, dedication, and willingness to surpass client’s expectations. This consequently results in a higher retention rate with businesses extending professional relations with outsourcing partners and even entrusting them with bigger and more complex projects.

Final thoughts

Bulgaria ranks ahead of the rest of the SEE countries in terms of competitiveness, innovation, and globalization. The stable business environment, outsourcing associations support, and economic freedom are still key factors for outsourcing IT to Bulgaria. Not only that, but the business gets to tap into a talent pool of highly skilled software developers with a proven success record of delivering quality solutions.

It is a difficult process to choose both the best sourcing location and the best service provider, but the gains, in the end, are worth all the research. Are you still having doubts about whether to outsource IT services to Bulgaria?

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